


Appetency and Collogue

by mamdible



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: (not the teenage kind i mean like estrogen), Angst, Complex relationships, Developing Relationship, F/M, Homelessness, Homophobia, Hormones, Pining, Trans Female Character, Transphobia, Underage Drug Use, but like medical drugs, but my heart just.... trans girl mido...., don't worry im going back to writing lesbians after this, god i can't believe i wrote het, medical transition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2019-12-26 05:28:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18276728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamdible/pseuds/mamdible
Summary: The pills are white and oblong. She takes them once a night, once her father has retired to bed and no one is there to question her as she creeps into the kitchen to wash them down with lukewarm water from the tap. Usually, these sort of pills require trips to the doctors office, prescriptions and recommendations from psychiatrists. Her family wouldn't allow her them. Her family wouldn't understand. Fortunately, Akashi does understand, even if he is cruel about it.(Midorima Shiyo is a girl trying to fix a body that never quite fit her.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HadenXCharm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HadenXCharm/gifts).



> alright, gonna say it straight up, i'm not trans, so i am lowkey terrified of fucking this shit up. If ur trans and find something distasteful, just hit me up and ill fix it as soon as possible. Anyway, in this, Midorima is dysphoric, but that doesn't mean all trans ppl are, and she takes hormones and talks about wanting surgery, again, not something all trans ppl want to do or have to do. Also, she's fairly feminine, but again, that's not something all trans women are, nor do they have to be. gender non conforming trans ppl are not only valid but also pretty, and if i, a butch lesbo, was to call someone 'not a woman' due to them being not feminine, i would be a fucking hypocrite.

The pills are white, and oblong. She takes them once a day, once her family has gone to sleep. She hides the pills in the same box as her SSRIs, and her family is too ashamed of the fact she has to take those to ever even touch the little box. 

Her father goes to sleep at one in the morning, usually, so she plugs her headphones into her alarm clock and gets rest while she can. If the lights are off, and she can’t hear anyone moving around, she waits for twenty minutes, heart pounding, before tiptoeing out of her room and down the stairs into the kitchen.

She doesn’t turn on any lights, too scared that her parents will wake. The fridge light illuminates her fumble for a clean glass, how her carefully manicured nails grip the tap, and guides her to the little pack of pills that she oh-so-quietly takes from the fridge. Something like relief flows through her when she swallows the little pill, placing it at the back of her throat with two long fingers and letting the water wash it down. 

It was necessity that pushed her to learn how to swallow pills. When she was a child, she would refuse any medicine in forms other than liquid, but her fast changing behaviours and thought patterns drove her to a psychiatrist, who in turn drove her to a little packet of pills that she had to learn to swallow. In the end, she’s grateful for those pills, not just for alleviating her symptoms, but also for making it so much easier to swallow the pills Akashi procures for her. 

After she’s swallowed the pills, she puts the foil packet back into the little box it hides in, safe in it’s advertisement of the brand of antipsychotics she takes, and puts it in the back of the fridge, where it stays. She puts the glass back in cupboard, and makes sure she hasn’t disturbed anything on the counter, before she closes the fridge and creeps back upstairs.

Her bed seems much more welcoming after she’s taken the pills. She slips carefully under the covers, and curls into the futon. Her family is traditional, after all – her SSRIs are probably the most modern thing in the house next to the computer and her phone (a reward for her placement on the national mock test).

Then she turns to her side and closes her eyes, and falls into a dreamless sleep once more.

***

In the morning there is a meticulous chaos that sweeps through the house. Her father gets ready for work, as does her mother, and she helps her little sister prepare for elementary school while she slips into her uniform (the one she hates so desperately). 

She takes no time at all to slip out of bed, hurriedly shucking the pink, fluttery nightgown she likes to wear to bed before her mother can open the door, and closing her eyes as she pulls on her underwear and pants, and finally the shirt. Once she’s dressed, she stalks into the bathroom connected to her room, and spends five minutes washing her face and brushing her hair (and on good days, putting on some concealer and a little bit of lip-gloss, and maybe mascara if her parents are gone early) before emerging from her cavern and walking down to the living room.

After that, she pours out cereal for herself and Atsuko, and eats for another five minutes. The half an hour after breakfast and before her rush to the train are occupied by listening to Oha Asa and looking for a lucky object amongst her stores. If she can’t find one to suit her purposes, she leaves early and stops by the variety store on the way to the station.

Today, though, she has no such trouble. The purple highlighter fits both her item and her lucky colour, so she leaves a little later and manages to say hello to Atsuko before she leaves. 

The walk to the station is enjoyable, especially since it’s beginning to cool from summer to autumn and the humidity is gone from the air. Her train arrives at the station three minutes after she does, and she gets from there her trip to school goes from pleasant (or at least tolerable) to fairly awful. The squash is horrid, with bodies pressing in on her from all sides, but it’s only four stops before she escapes again. 

She hates the crush of the train because it reminds her of how tall she’s getting, how she towers over most passengers on the train. It makes her feel insecure, as if she is somehow offending the world by growing in ways that girls should not (though at the same time she also offends the world by being a girl when it tells her that she should not be). But the ride only lasts so long, and from there it’s another five minutes to school.

Morning basketball practise is something she both loathes and loves. Basketball itself is something she both loathes and loves. She loves the sport, she loves shooting her perfect threes, and she loves hanging out with her friends (or at least she considers them her friends, though she’s unsure if they like her back). What she doesn’t love (or even like, really) is the changing rooms, the constant reminders that her body does not align with herself. 

Today is a day like any other, with no monumental difference, but at the same time she feels… nervous. The gymnasium is a familiar sight (not welcome and not hated, just familiar), and she picks up her pace as she approaches it. 

“Oi! Midorima!”

A clap on her shoulder quickly follows the shout, and suddenly Aomine is beside her, wide smile on his face (though recently said smile has become more and more mean and less innocent). “Aomine,” she acknowledges.

“You excited for the competition?”

“Of course. We will win, obviously.”

His smile fades a little at her words, and she feels as if she’s said something she shouldn’t have. She brushes it off, and continues walking into the gym. Practise, as always, will be brutal, but she is certainly prepared for it. 

***

Every three weeks, she meets Akashi in the evening, after practise has finished, and even Aomine and the strangely weak kid he’s befriended have left. They play shogi until everyone is gone, and once Akashi has won he hands over another foil packet, wordlessly.

Today is one of those days. The windows in the clubroom are open, light breeze wafting through. Soon autumn will fade into winter, and the windows will be jammed shut once more. She knows she will lose this game (a few key mistakes in the beginning have thrown off her whole campaign, but she doesn’t let that stop her from fighting) and Akashi does too, though sometimes she wonders if Akashi knows she will lose every game (or at least thinks so).

“Midorima,” he says, once the squeaking of shoes against polished hardwood has disappeared. Their game is abandoned, unfinished (unusual for Akashi, he usually times his win to coincide with the departure of Aomine and his friend) and Akashi looks serious.

“What’s the matter, Akashi?”

“I believe it might be best to move from anti-androgens to estrogen soon, Midorima. I believe you are familiar with the effects?”

The thought makes her heart race. Anti-androgens are, of course, helpful for her (she doesn’t know what she’d do if she were to become so overtly masculine like Aomine or Murasakibara), but at the same time she is a little desperate for estrogen, if only due to the effects she longs for. 

“Of course,” she replies. “I believe this would be an excellent move. If I might inquire as to how you procure it?”

Akashi simply smiles, and shakes his head. She smiles a little; because of course he would keep his cards close to his chest, how very like him. 

“Then I will give it to you during out next meeting,” he says, and with that he stands up and walks out. Her heart is beating out of her chest, and she feels like she’s floating. A laugh bubbles up in her chest, light and free, and she follows Akashi out.

***

There are times when she hates her house, how oppressive the forcible traditionalism is. But she loves her family, loves her mother and father and loves Atsuko most of all, even if they don’t know her, even if they call her ‘Shintarou’ (she can’t stand that name, Shiyo suits her much better).

No one except Akashi knows about her. Kise, Aomine, Murasakibara, they all think that she’s a boy, if a girly, prissy boy. She wants to tell them they’re wrong as much as she doesn’t, because being constantly labelled wrongly is so damn irritating, but the threat of alienation is worse. 

Her secret wish is to escape. To go to the west, where people like her are more accepted, or at the very least respected in their wishes (for the most part). It’s something she keeps close to her heart, like a perverse fantasy, because she has been raised to put her family above all else. She doesn’t think that she can do that, not when things are going so… awfully. Well. They’re only going awfully for her; everyone else seems to be having a great time. 

Or maybe that’s not true. Her friends have issues, her family have issues; just because she is miserable in her body doesn’t mean that they’re perfectly happy. It’s cruel to make such an assumption. She feels cruel, sometimes. She feels awful, like a perfectionist, like a horrible person.

She greets her sister, and then closes herself off in her room, pulling out her books from her bag. It’s a daily ritual (everything she does is a daily ritual), and she pulls off her school uniform with practise. The clothes drop to the ground, and she walks over them quite happily as she prances to her closet. 

The dresses in the back of her closet are one of her most closely guarded secrets, alongside the little pills in the fridge and her shogi games with Akashi. Her favourite is a white one with purple and green embroidery that falls around her ankles, and she loves the silky feel of the material against her legs and waist. 

It makes studying so much better, somehow, the dress fluttering around her as she sits at her desk, pencil scratching down notes dutifully. Duty – that’s a strange concept to her. It seems to trap her, to pull her down, this duty she has to her family and to society as a whole. 

Is she shirking her duty by existing as a person? Is that what she’s doing? Somehow, she doesn’t feel guilty. She feels comfortable in her own skin when she’s like this, and she can’t bring herself to feel ashamed of existing. 

***

Things have been… strained, since Nijimura left. Akashi handles the captaincy exceedingly well, as he does with all things, but the developing narcissism of everyone on the team (herself included) is difficult to manage, she’s sure. He seems stressed, and every regular can see it. 

They aren’t friends. She isn’t stupid enough to fool herself into thinking that, because even if Akashi has probably saved her life by providing her with the pills she so desperately needs, he’s still exceedingly cold, and plays with her like a cat plays with a mouse. 

She despises Aomine and Kise for their childish excitement with dunking, and also because they are typical teenage boys, and Aomine uses ‘gay’ as an insult for pretty much anything, and though Kise has more tact he still laughs along. She isn’t gay; she is very straight, and is attracted quite viciously to boys, but for some that’s gay enough, since she was born one. 

Kuroko’s strange obsession with sportsmanship and hard work infuriates her, especially since he isn’t as nice as he wants to be. Maybe it’s because she’s a very nasty person, and she hates nice people, people who aren’t perfect. His straightforwardness and blank eyes make her so mad, all the time. 

Murasakibara is quite possibly the most awful man on the planet. Lazy, a slob, and always leaving crumbs everywhere. Midorima scolds him, often, and Murasakibara ignores him. It’s annoying, infuriating, and she hates it. 

So she isn’t exactly friends with her teammates. She doesn’t feel the need to be. They win regardless of wether their teamwork is good or not, because they’re just that strong. 

Still, she attends practise to hone herself, to perfect her threes. Or maybe it’s to interact with other human beings. Either way, she still attends both morning and afternoon practise, even stays late with Akashi to play shogi sometimes. 

Aomine has started to skip practise sometimes. The arrogant laziness that’s developing in him is abhorrent. Everything seems to be falling apart in slow motion, like a train wreck caught in agonizing detail and slowed down so the general public can digest the tragedy on a deeper level. It feels like it should be faster, it feels like it should be an explosion, like a match in a tinderbox.

It isn’t.

***

She knows that Akashi, too, has some psychiatric issues. He told her in an attempt to either calm her to the thought of divulging which medications she took and how they would interact with the puberty-blockers, or perhaps in attempt to make him seem more sympathetic to her. 

Either way, she knows that he has issues with control, issues with winning and losing (she has gotten used to losing, over the past three years or so). She just never thought it would progress quite this far.

Akashi is facing Murasakibara in a one on one, and he is losing. Midorima was never quite stupid enough to think he would never lose, but to imagine and to experience are very different, and her breath is stolen just like everyone else’s in the gymnasium.

She can almost see when Akashi snaps. It’s a little flinch of his shoulders, a twitch of his lips barely a second before he’s standing again and his eyes are heterochromatic (or at least they seem to be, though that might be the light or something) and then Murasakibara is on his ass and everything-

“Actually, I’ve changed my mind. You don’t need to bother coming in to practise. As long as you win, I don’t care wether you attend regular practise or not.”

Midorima saw this coming. She saw this coming a mile away, saw the train wreck in slow motion. It just took her a little while to realise she was on that train too, and it sure doesn’t feel slow when she’s inside. It feels sudden, jarring, and terrifying. The vagueness of this new world unsettles her, because this is not her companion. This is some other person, whom she doesn’t know. 

(Selfishly, she thinks of the little oblong pills in a wrong packet, hidden away at the back of her fridge. Will this new Akashi continue to help her, or will he cast her away? She doesn’t know what she’ll do if her promised estrogen isn’t delivered, if her hope sweeps her feet out from under her.)

It feels like a betrayal when he calls her Shintarou, because-

He knows she hates that name. He knows she doesn’t want to reply to it at all, yet the social rules of society force her too. He has become complicit in a psychological torture against her, and unlike all her other torturers, he isn’t oblivious. He knows full well how much it hurts her to hear that name, and he says it with a smug smile regardless.

***

(He doesn’t abandon her completely. Shogi games are more brutal than ever, and her estrogen is handed across like a reward for entertaining him, rather than a gift for a friend.)

There are no more pills; instead, there is gel. She hides it in the back of her closet along with her dresses, and laughs at the irony of hiding her true self in a closet. Extending metaphors, stretching language too far to try and find meaning in a lawless world, where all her special rules have been upturned and tossed away.

She no longer sets an alarm for one in the morning; instead, she goes to bed after she finishes studying, and wakes up ten minutes earlier to apply the estrogen cream to genital areas (the mucosal tissue of the scrotum, anus and (non-existent) vagina absorb hormones at a much better rate than normal skin). 

The effects ought to be faster due to her age, and due to the fact she has not yet undergone puberty properly (height is pretty much the only thing that has escaped the effects of the anti-androgens), and the idea of changing both scares and excites her.

She is scared because if her parents notice skin softening, the change in fat collection (though she has never had much of that, nothing but skin and bones), the development of breasts, they will most likely punish her. 

But at the same time, it will mean she is finally correct, finally in the right body and looking how she wants to. Again, her fantasies of escape plague her nightly, fantasies in which she is herself in some foreign place like Paris or Los Angeles, and her friends all call her ‘Shiyo’, by the right pronouns, too.

The disintegration of her daily rituals forces her to rely more heavily on Oha Asa, and her mornings become more scrambled. Since her puberty blockers have finally been removed (and replaced), certain changes have begun to take place.

One of those changes is the sudden appearance of arousal. She has never before masturbated, too disgusted by her improper genitals, and because she has never before felt the urge to. After a startling and not entirely unwelcome incident when applying the cream, she researches stimulation of the prostate, and is interested by what she finds.

Another shameful secret is added to her pile, though perhaps this one actually is shameful. Or perhaps she was raised in a far too traditional family, and everything is falling apart.

***

By the time they graduate from Teiko, it is difficult to say wether they were ever friends at all. They certainly aren’t now – Kuroko tells her that he is going to quit basketball, and she doesn’t believe him for a second, but it still shows her that he is hurt and upset. She doesn’t really care, though.

What she cares about is wether or not Akashi will continue to supply her with Estrogen or not. She confronts him two days before summer holidays, heart beating out of her chest.

“I- Akashi, I have a question,” she says, tongue thick with some unnamed emotion (or perhaps a mix of so many her feelings are too muddied to be understood, let alone conveyed.)

“Don’t worry, Shintarou, I will continue to supply you with what you need – though due to the distance between our schools, our meetings may have to be fewer and further apart. Once every two months sounds agreeable, no?”

Relief floods through her, and her shoulders almost shake. Though Akashi is not a good person, he is not so awful as to abandon her completely. She, too, is not a good person. Though her friends are hurting, all she can think about is her own problems. Perhaps that is why they get along so well, the two of them; they are both fairly awful people, and misery loves company. 

“Thank you”, she whispers as Akashi strides out of the storeroom. He doesn’t reply, but she can feel the smug smile on his lips. 

***

She decides to go to Shuutoku High, due to their traditional teaching system, and due to their powerful basketball team. The orange uniform is distasteful, and makes her look a little bit like a carrot, but she doesn’t really care all that much. 

Her first day there is uneventful, though she does get the usual stares. All she can think about is wether or not her team will be useful to her, or wether they’ll simply drag her down. 

Practise for her is warming up, on her own, and shooting threes, again and again, from different positions, all over the court, shooting and shooting and shooting. Every shot goes in, and she is satisfied. She stays late after practise, until it’s dark outside, like she usually does. There’s someone else in the gym, a first year like her. She doesn’t pay him that much attention, just breezes past into the changing room. 

She uses the shower in a cubicle, and marvels at how smooth her skin has become in the year since she’s started Estrogen, how breasts have started to develop. They’re small, but not too small – edging on the line of a B cup, and maybe she really does need to get a bra soon. The thought is an alluring one – she has always wanted to wear a bra, but staved the want off by telling herself wearing one without breasts is what perverts do. 

The boy at practise stumbles into the changing rooms while she’s pulling on her uniform, and she listens to him retch into the drain of the shower for a while before the hiss of taps alerts her to his presence in a cubicle.

Her departure is a snappy one – she doesn’t want to alert the boy to her presence in the changing room, even though he quite obviously already knows. It’s fairly ridiculous, isn’t it, how she hides herself so carefully?

The next day, it is clear that this boy will be part of her daily routine. She can feel his glare prickling against her cheek, and almost bemoans the fact she’s going to have to deal with this shit.

Days pass slowly. She applies the cream, she attends practise, she wonders about various things, and the boy is there for all of it. She notices him more than she wants to, and wishes he were gone.

***

He approaches her out of the blue one-day, smile on his face as if he hasn’t spent the last couple of weeks hating her. “Hey, Shin-chan,” he says, and Midorima nearly has an aneurysm. 

Her first instinct is disgust at the name, because it’s her not name, the name she has since rejected. She tells him so, tells him to fuck off and to not call her that. He just laughs, and calls her a tsundere. 

In some ways, the name is awful, but the girly suffix added to the end, the gender-neutral nature of it… maybe it isn’t so bad. Certainly better than being called ‘Shintarou’, and she’s dealt with that before (though she certainly hasn’t enjoyed it).

That doesn’t mean she likes Takao. She barely tolerates her as a presence in her life, and certainly isn’t friendly with him. The seniors seem to think otherwise, and he is assigned to be her keeper, which is rather insulting. She hardly needs a keeper, after all – she is much more capable than most players, and even if she has a few idiosyncrasies and a horrible personality courtesy of her illness; she is in no need of a babysitter.

She bluntly tells Takao this once practise has let out (morning practise, of course – if it was afternoon practise, they wouldn’t leave till late at night). 

“Yeah, of course, Shin-chan. But you have to admit; someone needs to look after you. I mean, you’re so cute! What if you get lost and someone kidnaps you? That would be terrible for the team! I can’t let that happen,” he says, simpering. She knows it’s a joke, is fully aware of the fact, but being called cute still sets her face aflame. 

The only reason she doesn’t yell at him is because she’s taken aback. That’s it, really. And the reason she uses one of her selfish requests to skip class is absolutely not because her face is tomato red. That would be ridiculous.

For some reason, she doesn’t fight it as much as she should when he’s assigned as her keeper, instead accepting the new shadow she’s received as he trails behind her, a constant, laughing presence. 

***

The rickshaw is her lucky item for the day. Thank god she had one in the shed, or she would really have been screwed. Still, it’s hard work carrying it along, and she doesn’t own a bike. 

“Shin-chan?”

They live close together, she and Takao do. It’s a three-minute walk from her house to his, and an even shorter trip by bike, which is exactly the vehicle Takao is riding now. He pulls to a halt, face slack in a mix of confusion and amazement. 

“It’s my lucky item for today,” she says irritably. Takao dismounts his bike, pulls it closer to where she’s struggling along the footpath. They’re on the flat stretch before the hill, and she certainly isn’t looking forward to it. 

“Don’t you have a bike to attach to it?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be pulling it,” she snaps out. Takao is silent for a moment after that, and then he’s pushing his bike in front of her. How annoying, blocking her path like that – what’s he even playing at, that bastard?

“Hitch it up to mine,” he says. 

Oh. 

Okay.

She does that, forcing open the rusted mechanism with difficulty, and snapping it shut around the back of the bike. Then she turns to clamber into the rickshaw, and there’s a strong hand on her shoulder.

“Wait, wait, wait, what are you doing? I’m not pulling you! If anything, you should pull me, since I’m graciously lending you my bike.”

Any gratefulness she might have had evaporates immediately. She sniffs pointedly, and pushes her glasses up her nose with her bandaged hand. Another habit she’s picked up since middle school, another way to help her control the world. 

“Absolutely not. My hands would become calloused by the handles, and I wouldn’t be able to shoot my threes.”

This shuts Takao up, but only because he seems to be biting back a cry of frustration. “Fine! We’ll play Janken for it,” he shouts, and Midorima smirks. Fate is always on her side, especially in games like these. Besides, Takao, for all his duplicitous nature, is fairly simple when it comes to things like this. 

They throw out hand signs of the count of three – she throws scissors and he throws paper, and he lets out an aggrieved shout at that. But for all his (many, many) faults, Takao is a man of his word, so he clambers on to the bike and she clambers on to the rickshaw, and they set off (with great difficulty on Takao’s part, once they reach the hill.)

By the time they reach the school, he’s sweating like a pig, and they’re both fifteen minutes late. Miyaji threatens to throw a pineapple at them, and Midorima pretends to not be scared (the man can hit hard, and she has a very delicate constitution, for all that she has the stamina of a monster).

All day long, she thinks about the possible benefits of the rickshaw in daily life, and she absolutely doesn’t think about how Takao’s back looked when the sweat drenched his shirt and the material stuck to jumping muscles.

After practise, she announces to Takao (and the team in general, but the team in general isn’t important and somehow Takao has become important) that the rickshaw will now be her mode of transportation to and from school. Takao protests, and begs and complains and pleads, but the upperclassmen mercilessly dash his hopes against jokes about stamina training.

He’s playfully mad at her for the rest of practise. Or maybe he’s actually, legitimately angry with her, but it doesn’t last long once she asks him to pass to her. Within a few seconds, he’s happily joking again.

***

Her daily routine is much different to how it was in Teiko. She gets up twenty minutes earlier, and spends ten minutes (sometimes seven, depending on how much of a rush she’s in) applying estrogen cream to genital areas before carefully hiding the tub at the back of her closet once more. 

Then she takes off her nightgown and hides it back in her closet, and pulls on her school uniform, though she stops to admire herself in the mirror (growing breasts and no hair, smooth skin and longer lashes, facial structure almost changing, as is her skeletal structure and musculature). Five to ten minutes is allocated for her to lounge in the bathroom applying makeup and brushing her hair, another ten to eat breakfast, and then half an hour to find a lucky item. 

If she can’t find one among her stores, she waits for Takao to pick her up, and they bike to the closest convenience store. It makes them a little late for practise, but that hardly matters. She doesn’t have to take the train anymore, and riding in the rickshaw is a lot more fun than walking was. 

She practises hard, receives Takao’s passes and shoots again and again. Then she changes in a cubicle, and goes to class. She only shares one or two classes with Takao, which is good, because the man is a horrible distraction. 

After school she goes to practise again, and they practise until nine or ten o’clock. Then she piles into the rickshaw (now outfitted with cushions, and one of the seniors fastened an umbrella to it for when it was raining) and Takao complains all the way back to her house. 

She unhitches the rickshaw and pulls it back into the shed, then goes and has dinner with Atsuko, because even so late her parents usually aren’t home. After dinner is done and the dishes are stacked in the sink for someone else to wash, she goes up to her room and studies till eleven thirty. 

And after that, she masturbates. 

***

The Interhigh competition is in their faces much sooner than she could have expected. She will, of course, win, but it’s rather irritating how the competition seems to have crept up on her without warning. 

Shuutoku breezes through the first couple games, her perfect shots cutting down whichever team opposes them. It’s kind of pathetic, how they cry when they’re supposed to be shaking her hand. Takao looks almost sympathetic towards them, and she briefly remembers playing him some time in middle school.

It’s familiar, the stadiums. The bright overhead lights, the thud of basketball against hardwood, the squeak of sneakers – they are all so familiar, but at the same time so different, because her win is not guaranteed.

Teiko was a collection of monsters – even if she, by herself, wasn’t enough to destroy the other team, the other four players (five, she reminds herself, but Kuroko hardly counts) would be there to make up for whatever mistakes she made. They couldn’t lose.

Now it’s different, because there aren’t any other monsters to back her up. She stands on the court with naught but a team of mortals, and they are very good, but they aren’t guarantors of her success. 

It’s daunting, in a way. She wishes she could stop thinking such pessimistic thoughts. It feels like a bad omen, really, some warning of a future failure. It makes her nervous.

***

After they lose (to Kuroko, of all people, how embarrassing), Takao pulls her back to her house in the rickshaw. In a way, she’s grateful for it. The breeze against her face prevents too many tears from falling.

God, how pathetic is she? Crying over something as stupid as a basketball game. She has more things to cry about, but she doesn’t. She keeps her eyes tight shut, hoping to prevent any more tears.

Takao might be crying too, she thinks. His back is certainly shaking in the manner of someone who’s been crying, and when he turns around to face her, his eyes are red rimmed.

“Hey, Shin-chan, let’s go get something to eat. It looks like it’s going to rain, after all,” he says. It’s true; the clouds are heavy and roiling in the sky, bottom-heavy and threatening to dump its contents on to the unsuspecting city below.

“Fine,” she says, and nothing after that because her voice nearly broke with that. She has to keep a tight lid on things, or she’ll break down properly. Takao pulls the rickshaw to the side, taking up a parking spot meant for a car and surely angering some pedestrian with his atrocious parking. True to his prediction, it starts to spit fat droplets, and they hurry into the nearest shop.

What has she done to offend the fates like this? Why do they hate her so much? She’s sure her lucky item matched the terms Oha Asa set for her, so why is everything going so terribly?

Kuroko and his team are sitting at the available tables, eating at an ungodly pace. Takao tenses beside her, but if she looks down she knows a reflexive smile will have wormed its way on to his face. As much as he’s hurting from the loss, he’s also willing to play along with whatever mischief is presented to him.

There is some commotion, which she doesn’t pay any attention to, and then she’s sitting opposite Kuroko and Kagami Taiga and desperately wishing she wasn’t. It’s exceedingly awkward, and she can feel herself retreating into her shell – the only thing that stops her from just leaving is the heavy rain outside. 

“How can you eat so much,” she asks both incredulously and apathetically, because while Kagami’s appetite is truly a wonder (or perhaps a horror) she also really doesn’t care.

“I eat a normal amount,” he replies huffily. He absolutely does not, but it hardly matters to her. Kuroko is radiating smugness, as if he was actually important to the win. Well, he probably was, but Kagami was most likely more influential to the win than he. 

Conversation lapses into awkward silence once again, interrupted only by Kagami munching down teriyaki. Kuroko excuses himself, to go to the bathroom or something (it seems the awkwardness was enough to quash even his satisfaction), and they’re left alone.

Kagami swallows the massive amount of food stored in his distended cheeks (much like a chipmunk, she thinks bitterly), and clears his throat. Something isn’t right, she can tell. 

“Uh… Midorima, I – remember when I fouled you, right?”

“Yes, I recall.” Christ, why is he so irritating? Why is he making her recall that?

“Um. I was just kind of wondering… er… are you, like, a hermaphrodite or something? Or like a trans guy? I was just wondering if I was usin’ the right pronouns or shit. Cause like, I sorta felt your… uh… boobs.”

Her heart is pounding in her ears, blood rushing and face flushed. She knew, obviously, that the development of breasts was becoming noticeable, and that basketball shirts were fairly thin. It was just- no one had noticed before. Then again, no one quite had the courage to play rough like Taiga.

“Don’t you dare tell anyone,” she hisses, leaning over the table. He leans back, defensive and open. How can she shut him up? She could kill him, or maybe pay him off. Would that work? That would work, right?

“I wouldn’t! I was just kind of wondering, and uh… you need a bra, by the way. Also, what’s your gender? Sorry if that’s a little bit offensive, I was just wondering. Don’t want to call you the wrong pronouns.”

The question is a disarming one, for sure. Perhaps its because Kagami is used to Western culture, which is a little bit more sensitive with issues with gender and such. It’s certainly rude, and clumsy and a little insulting, but its better than the jeers and disgust she might be faced with if she were to come out to someone like Aomine. 

“I’m a girl,” she says, and it feels like a weight lifted off her chest, like a gasp of breath after drowning, like floating. “My name is Midorima Shiyo.”

“Okay,” Kagami says. “Is it alright if I still call you a guy when I’m around Kuroko, or are you out to him too?”

“Only use female pronouns if there’s nowhere else around. And don’t tell anyone. And definitely don’t call me Shiyo around others.”

Kagami nods, mouth stuffed yet again. He looks thoughtful, almost, as if he’s wondering wether or not to do something. If Shiyo wasn’t certain the boy was incapable of deep thought, she might be interested to know what he was thinking.

“I’m gay,” he says, and she does a fairly impressive spit-take. Kagami dodges, because of course he does, and then laughs at her. The audacity.

“I figured since I knew your secret, you should know mine. That way, you have backup in case I decide to ruin your life or something. I wouldn’t do that, but like, if it makes you feel better.”

Kuroko returns, after that, and silence settles once again. Kagami Taiga is gay, a man who is attracted to other men. She hadn’t anticipated this, hadn’t planned for it – but then again, people aren’t something to plan for. It makes her feel a little less alone; knowing someone else is at least a little similar to her (though she’s straighter than an arrow).

Things devolve from there, arguments and loudness, and somehow she gets teriyaki in her hair (fucking Takao), but the rain abates and she gets up without saying goodbye. Maybe she should – to Kagami, obviously, she can’t stand Kuroko, especially not when he’s so smug – but she doesn’t.

Takao drives her home in the rickshaw, inane chatter flowing freely from his mouth. Maybe their run in with Seirin was for the better. She certainly doesn’t feel quite as destroyed by the loss now (though Kuroko’s smugness is still salt in an open wound).

Even after a loss, her nightly routine is the same as usual. This time, though, she ponders various philosophical questions, and dreads the weekend, because the weekend heralds a scheduled meeting with Akashi.

***

Sometimes, when she’s traversing to a place she doesn’t usually frequent, she’ll wear typically feminine clothing. She informs her parents that she’ll be going to the library at least two days before her excursion, and they grunt their permission, too involved in their own business to care about hers.

She gets up early, and packs a bag – down the bottom go her carefully folded dress, and her makeup. Then she packs in a layer of thin books, in case her parents check her bag for some reason. Necessities such as phone and money go at the top of her bag. She dresses in a grossly male fashion, and sets off.

Once she’s at her destination, she goes in to the men’s bathroom at a usually abandoned public bathroom, and changes in one of the cubicles. Her height might once have given her away, but she makes sure to wear clothes that show off her quickly growing breasts, and no one really questions her anyway.

After she’s changed, she’ll put on makeup in the bathroom mirror, and hurry out into the world once more. She gets a few stares from other people traversing the streets, but that’s to be expected, isn’t it? She is six foot five, and her hair is green to boot. Maybe a few suspect, but no one says anything, so that’s good enough for her. 

Akashi arranges a new meeting place every time they meet, to avoid suspicion (at least that’s what he says). He texts the location to her, and arrives some time before the time he sets as their meeting. In some ways, it irritates her, that he purposefully arrives early to make her seem late, but then again, she doesn’t really care all that much.

This time, they’re meeting at a park on the east side of the city, just a little square of half dead grass and a swing in the corner, under the shade of a similarly half dead tree. Akashi is standing beside the swing, eyeing her as she walks towards him.

“Shintarou,” he greets. She wants to punch him, wants to make him shut the fuck up, because that’s not her name, and it never will be. She doesn’t, though, because Akashi has the power here. She isn’t sure what she would do if she had to cease taking the estrogen. Nothing good, surely. 

“Akashi,” she replies stiffly. “Do you have what I need?”

He laughs at that, mocking her obvious discomfort at their meeting. In some ways Akashi is a good friend. In others, he is not. Sometimes she wonders wether he only continues to give her the medication she needs so he can have more power over her. It’s not a particularly pleasant thought, but few thoughts regarding Akashi are.

“Of course, Shintarou. Still, you are being rather rude. Is it possible that you don’t want to see me?”

“Maybe. Still, thank you for your help.”

Truth is usually the best route to take when responding to Akashi’s questions. If she tries to lie, he’ll somehow twist her words and she’ll end up humiliated; a state she definitely wants to avoid.

“It’s no trouble, Shintarou. I must suggest, though, that you buy a bra fairly soon. Your current mode of dress is quite indecent.”

Ah, why does it always end up like this? Why is she constantly humiliated and ridiculed whenever she interacts with Akashi? There was a time when they were friends, close friends even, and now meeting him is a punishment that she must endure to get the medicine she needs.

“…That’s a very inappropriate thing to say.”

“And yet it is entirely true. Anyway, I must be off, Shintarou. I look forward to our next meeting.”

…She really hates these meetings. 

***

In all honesty, she forgets that Kagami and she exchanged numbers until her phone lights up one night with a text from the man. 

Hey, u want to meet up and go shopping?

For underwear I mean

Unless you already bought some

For some reason it isn’t as rage inducing as she thought it would be. The clumsiness of the request is nearly endearing, perhaps because she knows that Kagami has fairly pure intentions – and maybe even wants to get to know her.

Fine, she texts back. After that there’s a flurry of messages bouncing enthusiastically back and forth, slowly hammering out details of when, where, and how. It’s awkward, to communicate that she will be wearing a dress, but Kagami accepts it without pause or question.   
It’s… nice, to have someone to relate to on some level. Kagami is a man who is attracted to men, and she is a woman with the genitalia of a man. The two are quite different from each other – he is gay and she is straight, he is cis and she is trans – but there is some solidarity, being so ostracised in society.

She would like to meet with more people like her, or like Kagami. It’s difficult, in a society like Japan, where silence is required and mandated, but perhaps someday she might escape. 

The days leading up the their outing conform to routine, falling in line easily. Takao jokes easily with her, is funny and loud, and uses the wrong pronouns, but she is used to it. It doesn’t mean his ignorance doesn’t chafe, but she can hardly hold it against him when she hasn’t told him anything about her. 

Only two people in the world know about her. Both deduced it on their own, though Kagami had the help of estrogen changing her body severely. Akashi simply knew, as he does with so many things. 

***

The shopping centre is busy. It’s a fair way away from her house and school, to the point where no one she knows would be here, and the threat of recognition is naught. 

Kagami is as noticeable as she, standing a good head above most other pedestrians and looking at his phone, smiling at something unknown. She hurries over to him, seeking the safety of a companion to somehow guard her against the stares of others.

She knows she looks fairly freakish. Her height, though useful in games, works against her in such situations – for some reason, a tall girl is even more noticeable than a tall boy. Perhaps it’s because women are supposed to be demure, while men are supposed to be strong, and height in a woman is an undesirable trait. 

“Hey, Shiyo!”

Hearing her name called so casually, so easily, sends a shiver down her spine. That strange feeling of euphoria, of floating, returns full force throughout her body.

“Kagami,” she calls back, not bothering to add an honorific because he doesn’t deserve one. Kuroko might play at being polite, but she doesn’t feel the need to. She never did have any patience for liars, and smarmy people who said things they don’t mean.

“So, where do you wanna go? I’m sort of hungry, but if you wanna go shopping first, we can.”

Knowing full well the ungodly, nauseating amount of food Kagami consumes in a single sitting (and deciding she doesn’t want to be preoccupied with desperately recalling her understanding of the human digestive system and trying to apply this knowledge to Kagami), she acquiesces to going shopping first, and points at the closest clothing department. 

It’s not Victoria’s Secret or anything humiliating like that – just a clothing company that also fits bras. Perfect for her first fitting. They spend some time wandering around the store, eyes searching for the lingerie section while half-heartedly arguing about something, but find it without too much trouble.

“Hey, you go get fitted, I have to buy some boxers,” he says awkwardly, seemingly reluctant to go near the rows of lacy bra’s and see-through panties. She’s hesitant to approach the aisles too, but for a different reason. 

It is obvious to her that she belongs here. It is a necessity that she find a bra, because it’s honestly becoming noticeable and the last thing she needs is awkward questions from the team, or god forbid the school administration (she’s terrified of her parents finding out about her, because her mind shouts at her the statistics of transgender and same sex attracted teenagers becoming homeless after coming out). 

So she needs a bra, and this is where she needs to get fitted. It’s just some doubtful part of her cringes at the thought of invading women’s spaces, as if she would prey on them (hardly, she’s not interested in girls at all). 

Before she can retreat, though, one of the sales assistants approaches her with a wide smile. “Hello, miss! How can I help you?”

“Ah… I needed to get fitted for…”

Her voice trails off. Honestly, the only thing she can thank is the fact that she started taking puberty blockers before her voice broke, and that estrogen is making her voice oh so much higher.

“A bra? Of course, right this way. What’s your name? I’m Tanaka, by the way.”

“Midorima Shiyo,” she says. It feels good on her tongue, but then again it always does. Sometimes, late at night, she repeats it back to herself, revelling in how it sounds, how it fits her perfectly.

“Pleased to meet you. You’re so tall, how lucky! I always wanted to be taller, but I got stuck with barely one hundred and sixty three centimetres. And your eyelashes are so long! Ah, I’m jealous.”

Tanaka chatters as much as Takao, rattling off words at a pace she simply can’t keep up with. The compliments, though, they hit her full force in the gut, making her blush. 

“You’re very tall, so that’s going to affect what kind of bra you need, because of your shoulders. Do you have any particular styles that interest you?”

“Ah… I need some sports bra’s for basketball…”

“Oh, you play basketball? That’s so cool! You must be really good, ‘cause you’re so tall. I used to play baseball when I was in school, but now I’m too busy with university. Sports bra’s are cool, but the might not be the best thing to wear during the day, ‘cause they’re so tight. That can cause acne on your chest, you know. Do you want me to pick out some normal styles too?”

“Oh, uh. Yes please,” she replies. It feels like she’s been knocked off her feet by the sheer force and speed of Tanaka’s words. She feels like she’s out of her depth, like she’s drowning. Not in a bad way, exactly – it’s a strange feeling, one she can’t exactly name.

The cubicle is brightly lit, with a mirror set into one wall. She observes herself carefully, waiting for Tanaka to return with bras, and-

She is pretty. The dress suits her, and her face is angular and thin and feminine, with pink lips and long eyelashes. She’s pretty, and for the first time she feels like herself.

***

They leave the shopping centre with Kagami lugging a bag full of clothes (there were such pretty dresses there, she simply couldn’t help herself). In the end she bought five bras, two of them sports bras and the rest white and pink lacy things, with cute bows and such on them.

She likes cute things. It’s not such a big deal. Kagami talks about America, about how different things are, and how much he misses his ‘older brother’ Tatsuya, and how much of a crush he had on him when he was a kid. Mostly she listens, but occasionally she asks questions about what it was like over there. Apparently he was out in America, to his family and his friends and pretty much everyone, and no one really cared. 

It must feel awful, to be crammed back in the closet once more. She tells him so and he just shrugs. She knows that it feels awful to change back in to her men’s clothes, and Kagami looks at her sympathetically as she emerges from the men’s bathroom.

It feels like wearing someone else’s skin, like she’s pretending to be a person that never existed. Midorima Shintarou never existed, not in this world. She is Midorima Shiyo, and the trappings of a boy that never existed still haunt her. 

She comes home late, after all the lights are out. She texted her mother, and received permission to stay out late, so it’s not such a big deal. She’s already eaten with Kagami, a truly ridiculous amount, so there’s no need to heat up the left overs her mother left out for her. She puts them back in the fridge, and heads up to her room to take a shower.

The warm water loosens her muscles, makes her calmer. The adrenaline previously rushing through her veins at the thought of returning home with her loot seeps away, leaving her an empty shell of lost tension. 

Changing into her nightgown is again relaxing, like letting out a breath. The routine of her life settles on her, smooth against her skin. For all that there are parts of it that she hates, the constancy soothes her, prevents her from falling victim to the vagueness that is a world without routine. 

Even as she thinks this, though, she feels as if things are changing, almost imperceptibly. Perhaps it’s her imagination, but things seem to be slowly shifting, and she has the odd premonition that in the future these slow movements will have great effects. Perhaps she is just paranoid, finding hidden threats in some attempt to ruin an otherwise great day, or perhaps she is right, and things will be changing soon.

***

Practise becomes a little more difficult as time moves on. She was teased in middle school for being a late bloomer, for not having hair on her legs and having a high voice and a girly face. It was one of the many things she was teased about, but in high school, the progression of time and her refusal to ‘grow up’ in a masculine way proves to be a little more awkward.

Her teammates, in the painful and ugly throes of male puberty, do notice how she seems to not have the same pimples, the same hair growing on her face. They notice that while she grows taller, she doesn’t grow wider, and remains thin and willowy.

Takao teases her about it, calls her a ‘pretty princess’ (it doesn’t have the intended affect – she takes it as a compliment, and ends up flushing an embarrassing shade. Thankfully, Takao takes her blushing as a reaction to humiliation, and bursts out laughing). The seniors joke about her, but there is the tense undercurrent of curiosity and alienation. 

This tension is only exacerbated by the fact she (out of necessity) showers and changes alone, in a cubicle. There is some psychological degree of separation between the team and she, and it is only widened by every day that passes.

Other difficulties arise in having to recalibrate her aim to adjust for the tight material compressing her chest to flatness. The sports bra’s are practically binders, and do a wonderful job of squeezing her breasts until they aren’t noticeable. 

She estimates that by this time, after so long taking Estrogen, she is infertile. It doesn’t really matter to her; she never wanted to knock up someone else, and has never particularly wanted children. If, in the future, technology makes the last few steps to allowing trans women uterine transplants that allow them to give birth, she might be interested, but so far science staggers and tiptoes around the line.

Takao is probably the only one she is close to on the team, though Miyaji has no problem hitting her as hard as possible. He drags her to and fro from practise and home, goes with her most places, and carves out a place for him in her life. 

She isn’t sure if she likes it or not.

But she hasn’t time to worry about such petty things, not when she’s turning over and musing about another life-changing idea. She has a little sister, three years younger than her. Atsuko is cute, and tall, and quiet. They are practically mirrors of each other. 

Atsuko is a little more progressive than her parents. A little more open. Would she be more accepting of her? It’s a daunting thought, but a freeing one. She wants the feeling of floating again, the tingle of her name against her tongue. She wants to reintroduce herself to her sister, and to be accepted.

It takes her three weeks and another meeting with Kagami, in which Western culture and coming out is discussed, for her to work up her courage. During these three weeks she is distracted, her shots wavering before they sink through the net. 

But eventually, she is at home and her parents are not. Atsuko is in her room, working on her studies, and Shiyo should be too. She isn’t. Instead, she is standing awkwardly outside Atsuko’s door, hand wavering in front of the handle, as if touching it will burn her. She is also wearing a dress, and makeup, and her bra.

She takes a deep breath in, and opens the door.

Atsuko looks up at her, expecting some sort of serious request, and stops dead, eyes wide. “Um,” she says, and Midorima wishes she were somewhere else. What was she thinking, doing this? What was she hoping to achieve?

She forces herself to walk further into the room, and she can tell she’s flushed and terrified. “A-Atsuko,” she says. “I am not- I am transgender,” she says. She has never before been quite so terrified, so scared of a task. 

Atsuko stands, and walks towards her. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not a boy,” she says. There’s a lengthy pause, one that drags on for quite some time. Midorima feels the prickling of tears behind her eyes, the rise of acid in her throat. God, why can’t Atsuko just say something? Why can’t she just accept her?

“Okay. I mean, I don’t really understand, but okay.”

There’s a gentle hand on her shoulder, leading her back to Atsuko’s bed (Atsuko insisted on a western bed rather than a futon). They sit beside each other, and Midorima is too scared to open her eyes.

“Please don’t cry, Shintarou.”

“That’s not – My name is Shiyo, now.”

There’s another hesitant pause, but Atsuko doesn’t pull away. “Okay, Shiyo-chan. Please stop crying. I don’t really understand, but I love you all the same.”

It takes a while for her to stop crying, takes a while for her tears to finally dry. By the time they do, she has calmed down enough to feel embarrassed by crying in the first place, and certainly calm enough to feel comfortable explaining things.

“I was born in the wrong body. I should have been in a female body, as my brain patterns have a dissonance with my body. I have been correcting this by taking – in the past, taking anti-androgens, and now estrogen.”

Atsuko is similar to her. She listens, and strives to understand – and as usual, is successful. “So I should think of you as my sister, then?”

“Not around mother and father.”

“Obviously,” Atsuko scoffs. She really is quite rude sometimes, the little brat. But again, that same weight has been lifted off her shoulders. “Hang on, I have a question. How do you make it look like you have boobs? Have you padded your chest or something?”

“Hah, of course you’d want to know how to achieve such an effect. You have no breasts to speak of, after all.”

That earns her a rough shove, with not a bit of playfulness. She knows full well that her sister’s weak point is her flat chest, and if she’s going to bare herself she will bare her sister in the same breath.

“And no, this is an effect of estrogen.”

She unzips her dress, pulling it down to show her bra – and the breasts that fill the cups quite nicely. Atsuko lets out a wondering sound, a mix of awe and horror.

“Say, do you have any estrogen to spare?”

“Hah! As if I’d let you have any. Make your own, you greedy slut.”

Their conversation devolves from there, two sisters sitting on a bed and roughly pushing at each other, insulting each other. It must be a strange sight, to see the two of them – usually so prim, so proper – to be tussling like this.

That feeling of floating suffuses her again, flying away untethered, so far away from her problems. A fantasy of escape, repeated again and again. 

***

In the lead up to the winter cup, she and Takao stay late and practise. They practise passing, Midorima is humiliated in her attempts to dribble, and she shoots again and again until she can barely lift her arms and her muscles are trembling.

The heat and humidity of summer is long past, and the gym is freezing in later hours. The cool air stings against her sweaty skin, and her breath clouds once it leaves her mouth. She spends longer warming up, longer getting her blood to circulate.

Sometimes, on the freezing days, she even wears a jumper to practise, if only because her other options are none. It’s late at night, the overhead gym lights barely enough to light the courts. 

They’ve wound down, too tired to continue. Takao retired to the changing rooms a while ago, and now he’s fiddling with the rickshaw outside, so she takes the opportunity to wander into the changing rooms.

She isn’t really sure what possesses her, actually. It’s some instinctual reaction to being walled in, probably, but she just can’t explain it at all. Instead of going in to her cubicle, as usual, she turns on the taps of the shower in the main area.

The spray is warm, and that by itself is enough to make her shuck her uniform and carefully take off her bra – another incentive is the sweat drying and sticking to her skin, making her itchy and disgusting.

She steps into it, revelling in the warmth that rolls over her. It’s been far too cold recently, but she practises into the night anyway, because she feels as if she ahs to. 

Her hair has been getting longer, now, curling down her neck and hanging in her eyes. It looks like she has a cute pixie cut, when coupled with a pretty dress. It sticks to her skin, beaten down by the water. When she showers, it goes dark green, to an almost black.

“Hey, Shin-chan,” Takao shouts, and she fucking panics, but its too little, too late. He rounds the corner, storms in to the changing rooms, and stops dead. 

“Takao…” she says, trailing off, because what’s she supposed to say? Takao looks disgusted, looks confused, what is she supposed to say? She didn’t plan for this. This wasn’t supposed to happen.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this one took so long to finish, but it's finally done! So happy rn lmao

So Takao is a pretty simple guy. He’s not exactly straight – guys can get him going as much as girls – but he’s straight enough that a pair of boobs (especially in real life) get him going pretty good.

Now, he didn’t really expect to stroll in to the changing rooms to see his best friend – his male best friend – naked, with a pretty nice pair of tits. He drops his eyes down a little further, becomes confused, and looks back up to the boobs.

He finds Midorima attractive. The man is 195 centimetres of smooth skin; pale and flushed when he blushes. Takao likes the pink of his cheek, the fullness of his lips. Takao likes a lot of things about Midorima. 

Is it so strange for him to get a little aroused when seeing boobs, in combination with a man (woman?) he finds attractive, and has for a while? He doesn’t think so, and neither does his half-chub pressing against his trousers.

Midorima obviously has a different idea, ‘cause when his (her?) eyes drop to his pants, he lets out a shout of horror and drops into a crouch, defensively shielding the more stimulating parts of his body.

What’s he supposed to say? What’s he supposed to do? Is his best friend a guy, or a girl, or neither? He knows about hermaphrodites – is that it? But that’s different, isn’t it, Midorima looks very…

Feminine. He’s always been girly looking, with a feminine face and a high, narrow waist. If he were like 20, 30 centimetres shorter, he probably would have been mistaken for a girl a lot of the time.

It suddenly clicks that Midorima is fucking terrified, so he slaps an eye over his eyes and spins around. “Sorry, Shin-chan, I know you’re so prudish!” 

Yeah, maybe he can just play this off, ignore it completely and pretend all’s normal, like Midorima doesn’t have boobs, and Takao doesn’t have a boner at the sight of his best friend.

He would also like to establish that this isn’t the first time Midorima has aroused him – when the man (woman?) is flushed after a game, blushing at a joke at his expensive, all sorts of things, Takao feels the pull of arousal. And he was never one to dance around his attraction, so Midorima blushing and doing things is a common feature in his fantasies.

So it isn’t just the sight of titties that his him in such a state – it’s just that those tits are attached to Midorima, and Midorima is attractive. He can hear Midorima hurrying to put on clothes, pulling on his school uniform. He wonders if Midorima is blushing.

God, these thoughts aren’t helping his situation. He wills it to go down, and honestly, is this the time to become a proper teenage boy, aroused at the slightest thing?

It’s awkwardly silent, but he doesn’t know what to say or do, so he stays quiet, hand over his eyes and desperately trying to will away his erection. He jumps about half a foot when Midorima claps a hand on his shoulder, heart beating out his fucking chest.

“If you tell a single fucking soul, I will kill you,” he says. He isn’t joking – he might not kill Takao, but he sure will sever their friendship with little to no hesitance. Takao isn’t sure what he isn’t supposed to tell.

“Uh… you don’t have to worry, Shin-chan, but I have to ask, why do you have tits?”

Midorima sure does flush at that. His face is tomato red, so different from his usual pale skin. Takao half expects a slap at that, but nothing comes, and he’s relieved, because Midorima sure is fucking strong. A blow from Shin-chan and he’d go flying for sure.

“The effects of estrogen,” he begins, and Takao is already confused, ‘cause estrogen is like oestrogen and that’s a hormone that girls have (even he, who failed biology three years and running, knows that).

“The effects of estrogen have significant effects on puberty.”

“So like, you’re a guy who has too much estrogen?”

Midorima seizes at that, and it’s like he’s drawing himself up, his posture straightening and muscles tightening. He stands to his full height, looking down at Takao. Takao can’t see his face, ‘cause his head is haloed by one of the gym lights.

“I am not a guy,” he spits, “I’m a girl, who takes estrogen to supplement a biological lack.”

Takao (with some difficulty) does a mental overhaul, in which pronouns and preconceptions are rewritten into the category of ‘female’, and applies such categories to Midorima.

Midorima is a girl - a trans girl, a transgender woman. He thinks he can probably understand that. He thinks he can probably understand her.

“Ah… okay. Oh, that just makes you so much cuter, Shin-chan! I’ve always wanted a girl best friend. Hang on - am I dead-naming you? That won’t do. Tell me, what’s your name?”

Midorima is unsurprisingly taken aback. God, she’s just so cute sometimes. “Shiyo,” she says quietly. “My name is Shiyo. With the kanji for aspiration and world.”

“Ambitious as ever, huh, Shiyo-chan? Is it okay if I call you Shin-chan around the team, or are you going to come out?”

She sniffs, pushing her glasses further up her nose, but there’s an undercurrent of fear to her movements. “Don’t be stupid, Takao. If I were to be open about my gender to the team, I would be kicked off. And I couldn’t play in the girls team, either, because that requires the legal changing of gender markers, and my parents don’t know.”

Briefly, Takao feels pity for Shiyo-chan. It must be a pretty shitty way to live, tiptoeing around pretty much everyone who knows her, never being able to correct them, or being scared of what they’ll think but that’s kind of relatable for him. He thinks the term is bisexual, but he isn’t really sure. It fits him, though – equal attraction to men and women, though he falls more on the female side of things.

“Anyway, lets play Janken to see who’s pulling the rickshaw.”

“You’d let a girl pull you around? You truly don’t have any pride, do you?”

After that, they fall into bickering, yelling back and forth. It seems that with every comment, he’s reassuring her that he accepts her, in her entirety. He will admit, he isn’t sure he entirely understands why she’s like this, but he can at least try to.

***

The team is generally comprised of some fairly accepting guys. Most are straight (the exclusion is himself, and some other gay dude on the second string), but none of them are outright bigots.

Still, even though they’re fairly accepting, and okay, they are still straight dudes. Takao is mostly straight, a little gay (the term is bisexual, he thinks), so he feels comfortable distancing himself from the other guys on the team. Shiyo-chan isn’t even a guy, so it hardly matters.

But the point is, they’re straight dudes, and socialisation plus toxic masculinity plus whatever else the fuck is happening in their brains means they occasionally spout some absolute and utter bullshit.

The gay jokes are crude, and clumsy and very, very ugly. Takao doesn’t enjoy hearing their jokes about how a girl in their class puts on her makeup so badly she looks like a – he doesn’t even want to think the word, actually, so he censors it and replaces the fairly nasty slur with the sound of him screaming at the top of his lungs.

He doesn’t enjoy hearing about that. Shiyo-chan probably enjoys hearing about it even less, from the way her shoulders are tense and she’s biting her lip. It must be suffocating – hell, he’s feeling suffocated just being around it, and it isn’t even indirectly directed at him, so what she’s feeling must be awful.

Maybe if he were less of a coward, he would be able to stand up for Shiyo-chan, tell the guys on the team that you just can’t say that sort of thing, that it’s fucked up and insulting to trans people, and to the girl in question. But he doesn’t want to risk an argument with his seniors, so he keeps his fucking mouth shut and he keeps his place on the team and Shiyo’s mouth tilts down at the edges for the rest of practise.

The ride home is really shitty, guilt and self-hatred eating away at his stomach. Shiyo-chan is silent as always, but it feels heavier now, and he can’t bring himself to force the usual chatter out of his mouth.

His house is a little further away from school than hers, so she gets out first. She looks miserable, wearing the wrong uniform (a gakuran, such a pity, especially when she would look so pretty in their uniform) his heart just goes out to her.

“…Sorry I didn’t say anything, Shiyo-chan,” he mumbles. He doesn’t have the guts to look at her. She doesn’t have the guts to do lots of stuff. Fuck, he’s pathetic.

***

Takao considers himself a people watcher. Recently, his favourite subject to observe is Shiyo-chan – a habit only increased by the recent revelation that Shiyo-chan is actually a girl.

They practise together late at night every weeknight except Thursday, and on Thursday they study together in the library. He watches her pretty much all the time, one eye trained on her face. That’s what’s most interesting to him, her face – not just ‘cause she’s super pretty, but also because that’s where her emotions most show.

Most people think she either doesn’t show her emotions or doesn’t have them, but they just don’t know how to look (or maybe they don’t bother to look). Her eyes are super expressive, eyelashes narrowing and widening and generally being super long and pretty. Her mouth, too, twitches up or down or thins out depending on her mood. Oh, and her cheeks always flush when she’s embarrassed, little red spots high on her cheekbones.

When she’s studying, she sometimes bites the end of her pen. She’s pretty much always frowning, and he wants to reach out and press a finger to the little wrinkle that worms between her brows. 

Basketball practise, he doesn’t really have much time to focus on anything but the ball in his hands, and shooting and blocking and dribbling, but he still steals glances towards Midorima, shooting away at the end court. 

She’s surprisingly graceful when shooting, and her hand without tape seems somehow naked, like he’s not supposed to see it. He wonders what it would be like to lick her fingers, to kiss her palm and hold them.

Oh, and another hobby of his other than people watching – being a pervert. He knows he is perverse, knows that he has fetishes and kinks that other people don’t. They aren’t anything gross or weird like getting off on violence or domination, just certain things make him go nuts.

He really likes the little area between a skirt and thigh-high socks, and he likes cute lingerie. He has a bit of a thing for hands, too, and he’d definitely like to see whoever his partner might be in a cute dress while he fucks them.

So he’s a little perverted. He can’t really help but apply these perversions to his crush – Shiyo is just so cute, after all. Even when he thought she was a guy he still applied such fantasies to her, and now they’re only encouraged by the fact he actually saw her boobs.

Ah, he feels a little bad about that, he feels a little bit like a peeping tom. He didn’t exactly mean to peep on Shiyo, but it just sort of happened. She was showering in the public area, after all, though that certainly doesn’t mean she was asking to be perved on. 

Maybe he should apologise. His eyes flick up to Shiyo-chan, where she’s hunched over the library desk, little frown on her face. She’s puzzling over some complex equation, probably from grade eleven or twelve, because it makes him dizzy to look at.

“Hey, Shiyo-chan,” he says conversationally. She looks up at him, distracted and a little annoyed, because she was focused. She’s so damn pretty, with her high cheekbones and pink lips and cheeks. “Sorry for peeping on you in the bathroom that one time. I really didn’t mean to, but it was still shitty of me.”

She flushes bright red, splutters and stalls and stutters. There’s a mumbling of some words, denial of offence and the entire wherewithal that Shiyo-chan usually blathers whenever she’s upset.

God, she’s so pretty. And he can tell she’s happy he apologised, on some level, because, unintentionally or not, he violated her in some way. Not deeply, not violently, but enough to make her uncomfortable. And he regrets his accidental actions, and wants to make it better.

***

Takao is a guy that jokes a lot. He flirts jokingly with friends, with girls and boys alike, and he teases Shiyo-chan constantly. Some part of his friendly ribbing is a little bit less friendly and a lot more ‘god I’m so in love with you please kiss me’, but overall he just teases jokingly. 

Shiyo-chan is sensitive. Her emotions are kept tight in her chest, far away from prying eyes. She doesn’t have thick skin, and she doesn’t have the intuition to know when he’s joking or not.

It’s not exactly a brilliant combination, he admits, but Shiyo-chan’s other cute characteristics more than make up for it. Still, her demeanour (aloof, arrogant, like she’s looking down on everyone else) means she has few friends outside of himself and…

No, it’s pretty much just him. Maybe some of her old schoolmates could count as her friends, but probably not, honestly. From what he’s seen, they are on spectacularly bad terms. 

He has pretty much convinced himself that he is Shin-chan’s only friend when the startling reminder comes in the form of one Kagami Taiga, the dude that beat them at Interhigh, a crime that Takao believes should result in execution. 

But for whatever reason, they’re currently at a shopping centre all the way across town, meeting with Kagami fucking Taiga. And the worst thing of all is that Shiyo-chan is actually super cute today! Seriously, she’s wearing a dress shorter than usual, and high heels, and-

Maybe he’s leaping to conclusions, but the appearance of Kagami Taiga and the appearance of Shiyo-chan’s cute side seem to be linked, which probably means Shiyo-chan has a crush on him.

Jealousy isn’t an unfamiliar feeling to him. He’s a jealous guy, gets crushes easily and gets vicious easier, but he doesn’t think its ever hurt quite this much to find out someone he likes has feelings for someone who isn’t him. 

It might be a sign of how serious his feelings actually are, and that’s-

A terrifying fucking thought. He’s not a serious guy, he’s a joker, ask anyone, and the idea of being serious about someone, the idea of loving someone without jokes or evasive flirtations scares him. Is he so scared of commitment? It seems pathetic of him.

He can’t blame Shiyo-chan for falling for Kagami, though. The guy is legitimately nice, and he’s got an amazing body to boot. Nice face, but his eyebrows are a bit weird. 

“Hey, Takao, right?”

 

“Yeah, that’s me! So, what’re you looking for?”

Kagami shrugs nonchalantly. “I just wanna eat some food and maybe get some new shirts,” he says, and Takao realises that this day is pretty much just for Shiyo-chan, so she can add to her repertoire of clothes.

The idea doesn’t irk him or put him out of his good mood, strangely. God, he’s fallen hard, hasn’t he?

***

He comes over to Shiyo-chan’s house for the first time two weeks before the Winter Cup. Her family is traditional, as is their home – pretty big for a house in Tokyo, with tatami mat floors and screen walls (though there are some real ones to support the architecture of the house).

Shiyo-chan’s mother greets him politely, if a little hurriedly, and then she’s out the door and off to work. They sit awkwardly near the entrance for a while before Shiyo stands and leads him up the stairs to her room.

Her room is ordered, neat, and absolutely crammed with carefully organised oddities (lucky items from days gone by, he realises). She has a futon instead of a western bed, and they both sit on it and lean against the wall. Above them is a window with the blinds half drawn, and the last light of the afternoon casts patterns on the floor. 

“So, Shiyo-chan, do you wanna study?”

She nods, and they study for nearly twenty minutes before Shiyo stands and walks to the closet, fumbling with identical uniforms and button down shirts before she pulls out a box from the back of her closet.

If he were looking through the room of a guy, he would assume that said box would contain porn, but Shiyo-chan isn’t a guy and even if she were she seems too prissy to indulge in that sort of stuff.

Ah, the idea of Shiyo in relation to anything sexual at all gets him going a little bit more than it should. He’s in it deep now, he really is. 

He’s silent as Shiyo cards through the pretty, lacy clothes kept in the box (there’s a silky pink nightgown, he’s going to die). Something about this moment seems so intimate, as if she were baring herself for him. He wants to return the favour, but he has no clue as to how, so for now he is silent and honest as he watches her.

She eventually pulls out a tub of cream, plonking it down in front of him solidly. 

“Estrogen,” she says. He doesn’t quite understand – is this tub of cream how she applies her estrogen? Is this cream her estrogen?   
“Uh,” he replies intelligently. Shiyo rolls her eyes with the air of someone very fed up with the idiocy of those around them. “This is the estrogen I apply to incite female puberty, idiot.”

“Oh. Okay.”

She looks at him silently for thirty-two seconds (he counts them one by one) then huffs a little. Though he prides himself on being an experienced and adept Shiyo-chan watcher, he’s a little bit lost as to what she’s thinking, feeling and expressing at the moment.

***

Meetings with Kagami become a more common thing. Takao both hates and admires the man, because on one hand he’s a jealous creature by nature, but on the other he’s so fucking gorgeous that Takao wants to just-

Not appropriate thoughts, and though Shiyo-chan is really the only person he wants a real relationship with, he can still fantasize about others. He takes a little bit of pleasure in it, flaunting to no one that Shiyo-chan doesn’t control all of him. 

On their fourth meeting, Kagami, out of the blue, tells him that he’s gay. Takao splutters like a fish for about a minute before managing to eke out a confession of his own. It’s funny – the man seems so fearless, so bold in announcing himself, but when Takao looks at him he can see the fear and relief plain in his face.

It’s terrifying, really, to think those that once were your friends could abandon you, reject you so outright. That’s why he hasn’t told anyone except Shiyo-chan, and Kagami too, now.

His parents would probably be accepting, he knows that, it’s just… the fear is still there, no matter the fact that they have made their support for gay people brutally clear multiple times. It’s just… would that support extend to their son? Would they be okay with their own flesh and blood being different to them?

It’s probably more difficult for people with plainly homophobic parents, like Shiyo-chan. That might be a cruel thing to think, actually. Its just… there is no uncertainty. If she were to come out, she would be rejected cruelly, and probably kicked out of the house, and left homeless. 

It’s terrible. He would help her, offer her a room, of course, obviously, but he would rather she emerge from her shell when she isn’t dependent on her parents. 

Then again, even with accepting parents, life is still pretty fucking hard. Kagami’s dad knows he’s gay, is fine with it, and he’s still not totally out. 

“So, your team knows, or…?”

Kagami lets out a snort at that. “Riko knows, and so does Kuroko, ‘cause we’re tight and if I was going to come out to everyone later, I didn’t want him getting the wrong idea. The rest of the team, though? I’m not fucking stupid, man, I kind of want to keep my position on the team.”

“Yeah, I get where you’re coming from. Only people that know about me are you and Shiyo-chan, just ‘cause… I mean, they aren’t bad guys, but they’re still…”

That makes the other man snort. They’re both sitting down on a chair outside the changing rooms, where Shiyo-chan is trying on a series of swing dresses with low cut hemlines, and tight waists.

She looks gorgeous in them, honestly. He wants to wrap his hands around her waist, wants to kiss the line where her shoulder meets her neck. Ah, he really is pining, isn’t he?

It’s sort of a relief to know that Kagami is gay, more of a relief to learn that Shiyo knows that Kagami is gay. Any jealousy he once had of the two of them is behind him now, ‘cause there isn’t and never was any relationship, not even a possible one.

And he now has a cool friend out of it all, too. Kagami is a pretty nice guy, after all. 

***

Shiyo has a little sister called Atsuko. They resemble each other to an eerie level – same facial structure, same long eyelashes, same colouring. Atsuko isn’t Shiyo-chan, though. Their ticks are completely different, their mannerisms diverging from the root of their genetics. 

When he meets her for the first time, she bows deeply at him. He panics for a second, then bows back, and only realises that Atsuko is much more wicked than Shiyo-chan when he hears a laugh muffled behind a hand.

They get on like a house on fire; meetings accompanied with raucous laughter and not so gentle teasing. Shiyo-chan looks a little miffed, a little put out by the fact she’s not the centre of attention, and he inwardly coos at how cute she is. Outwardly, he spends as much time with Atsuko as possible, while also showering Shiyo with attention and affection.

It’s difficult, when they aren’t dating, to show affection. He does his best, though, hugs her and climbs in her lap and when they’re in Atsuko’s room, and Shiyo is sitting on the ground while he lounges on the bed, he puts his chin on the top of her head, and cards his fingers through soft tresses.

Her fringe is getting long, nowadays. It hangs in front of her eyes, shadowing her face. She manages to pull off an almost bowl cut remarkably well – he’s a little bit jealous, actually.  
Shiyo is beautiful. Even the guys on the team notice it, and either joke about it or give awkward laughs in response to ‘if you had to pick a guy’ questions (those questions make him fume, ‘cause Shiyo isn’t a guy, but then again everything people say about Shiyo-chan makes him fume). Takao appreciates it, though, ‘cause Shiyo really could be a model.

She definitely has the height for it, and if stupid pretty boy Kise Ryouta can be a model, Shiyo definitely can. Oh, but she’d have to wait for it, ‘cause otherwise they’d make her model men’s clothes. 

He understands that trans people don’t have to perform to standards of femininity and masculinity – that trans women can be as masculine as they want, and trans men can be as feminine as they want. His own expression of gender is a bit different to what’s widely accepted, too, so he has no problem with it. The thing that irks him about Shiyo-chan wearing men’s clothes is that she doesn’t want to. 

She loves wearing dresses, skirts, cute blouses and tight jeans. She looks good wearing them, too, but that isn’t the point. Anyway, she enjoys wearing those things. Society mandates that she wear different things to what she wants, and the way they so casually box her in makes him want to scream.

There are still things he doesn’t understand about Shiyo, about being trans, but he tries to understand, and understands that his opinions on what she does and who she is mean very little as long as he treats her with respect. 

Well, that’s one way to put it. Another would be that he just doesn’t get an opinion on such issues, that he just keeps his mouth shut and accepts what Shiyo feels, the way it should be. He would be furious if someone tried to dictate to him the terms of his attraction to guys and girls, after all, and he figures the same applies to Shiyo and her gender.

So he calls her by the right pronouns whenever he feels safe, calls her by the right name in private, and switches from ‘Shin-chan’ to ‘Shi-chan’, ‘cause he figured it’d be better. The grateful look he receives after practise reaffirms that yes that is a good thing. 

She tells him about nonbinary people – those that fall outside of gender, undefinable and genderless. That’s how he understands it, at least, that these people cannot be defined using gendered terms, and that to collectively sum them up and prescribe them characteristics to describe themselves would be pointless, changing a binary to a trinity. 

He learns a lot, hanging around Shiyo. He learns how to study, learns about the human body, learns about trans people and gay people and how to fit into a world where he feels ill at ease, and he learns that he is probably in love with Midorima Shiyo.

He learns that he wants to tell his parents about himself.  
They’re away on business more often than not, sometimes together and sometimes apart. He has a little sister, but often Aoi stays at his aunt’s place, because he isn’t mature enough to take care of her, and she’s only five.

His childhood was spotty, and Aoi’s childhood is becoming spotty, with long absences on his parent’s part. Sometimes he resents them for their airy demeanour, but then he remembers the tight control Shiyo’s parents exert on her, and he feels a little less angry.

Dad’s away on business, but Mum is home for another week before she takes off to France for a month. Dad will miss her by about a week and a half, maybe two if the business talks stretch longer than they’re supposed to. He really doesn’t want to say it twice, so he’ll rely on the ironclad communication between Mum and Dad.

He was at Shiyo’s place this afternoon, sitting on Atsuko’s bed as Shiyo sat and read one of her medical books, relaying to him certain facts about the human brain and production of serotonin. In the morning they practised basketball for hours, and then he showered at Shiyo’s place and got changed and they studied.

Now he’s back at his house, sitting in his room and rehearsing in his brain what he’ll say, except he doesn’t have a speech and his mind is playing five different tracks of thought at the same time, colliding with each other and merging and diverging. 

Terror about what will happen, nerves and determination, speculation and worry, worry, worry, all of it whirls around in his brain. But then Mum calls him for dinner, and he stands and pushes his thoughts away and his nausea down.

He’s quiet during dinner, and Mum can tell something is wrong. Well, he can tell she can tell something is wrong with him. Was it this terrifying for Shiyo to tell him? Was it this terrifying for Shiyo to tell Atsuko? Well, he found out on his own.

Well, but, except – all of these differences between Shiyo and he, looping like a track on repeat. They don’t matter.

“Hey, mum,” he forces out. He’s going to throw up, and he can’t seem to force his usual smile on his face. This is the scariest thing he’s ever done, no joke and no shit. Fuck, it’s so terrifying.

“Hey, mum,” he repeats, “I like guys and girls.”

From there he stands abruptly, practically flings his half empty plate into the sink and runs back into his room, where he hyperventilates and cries for quite some time.

Later, his mum gently knocks on the door, and lets herself in. She walks over to him, where he’s curled up on his bed, and holds him in her arms, holds him tight and close. 

“I’m glad that you felt you could tell me,” she says. “I’m so proud of you, and I support you no matter what, and even if my love for you wasn’t unconditional, this wouldn’t be one of the conditions.”

He sobs into her shoulder, working himself to tears and tantrum, though this time in relief rather than fear and horror and some tinge of shame, though he by no means is ashamed.

***

“Hey, Shiyo, where do you get your estrogen?”

She freezes at that, jaw clenching. A sore spot, then, and he’s hesitant to poke the ones related to her gender and her transition because that’s the sort of shit you don’t make fun of, the sort of shit that hurts and isn’t okay, is worth ending friendships and families over. 

He doesn’t ask again.

God, he feels so very sorry for her. If she were to come out, there would be no reassurances of love, no support and no pride. The only thing that would greet her outside the closet door would be disownment and homelessness, and-

He doesn’t want to be the cause of that, so he keeps his mouth shut. If Shiyo wants to tell her parents, he’ll back her, but he sure as shit isn’t going to out her himself, nor pressure her to follow him out to her family.

But he does ponder, sometimes, as to wether Mr and Mrs Midorima would really be so cruel, ‘cause surely, even if they hated people like that, Shiyo is still their daughter, right?

Or not. Or maybe she’s an imposter taking over the body of their never-son, the son they convinced themselves was real but never quite was. ‘Cause Shiyo has always been a girl, even before she was on puberty blockers, even before she was on estrogen, even before she knew she was one.

He thinks about Shiyo as he wheels her to the semi-finals of the Winter Cup. She’s nervous, he can tell that much. They’re playing Rakuzan, playing her former captain, and from what he knows the dude is absolutely crazy, so it makes sense for her to be nervous. He wishes she wasn’t, though. He wishes she were confident and powerful, and he wishes there wasn’t this air of uncertainty in the air.

In the locker room, Shiyo changes in a cubicle. He knows she’s wearing a binder; she always does on game days. It’s funny, really – he wants her to play on a girl’s team, because she is a girl, but at the same time he wants to play with her on the same team. Maybe the only solution is to just desegregate the playing of sport by gender.

Games, for him at least, pass by in the blink of an eye, but it feels like an eternity when he’s on the court. He’s good at basketball, this he knows. Shiyo is more than good at basketball; she’s a once in a lifetime prodigy once she begins to work on her dribble and blocking skills. 

Their team is good at basketball. They’re a solid team, enough to give even Rakuzan a run for their money. They lose anyway.

(He takes little pleasure in the fact they fight to the end, because it seems so sad, so pathetic of them. There is some pride in it, and pride is what Ootsubo expresses to them for playing a good game, but it-

It didn’t feel like a good game. It felt like Akashi was taunting Shiyo, not even the whole team, just Shiyo. And he refused to use her proper name, which pissed Takao off, and now he knows that Akashi knows, infuriates him.)

Post Rakuzan Shiyo-chan is a mess. She doesn’t call or text him for a week, doesn’t show up at school so he shows up at her house, and Atsuko tells him briskly that she’s been holed up for the entirety of her absence. Apparently that used to happen quite often in middle school, and though Atsuko is upset her sister has relapsed, she isn’t quite as fucking terrified as he is. 

In the periphery of his mind, he has known for some time that Shiyo isn’t entirely… well, mentally. She’s mentioned medication in passing, no hint of shame in her voice, but that’s even more awkward to ask about than being trans, so he didn’t really bother to follow up on it. Still, to be confronted with it so suddenly is… startling, to say the least. 

He knocks hesitantly on her door, and then pushes in. Shiyo is curled up in her bed, desk piled high with papers covered in chicken scratch (so very unlike her usual neat handwriting), and several meal’s worth of plates are stacked in the corner.

“Shiyo?”

She turns over at the sound of his voice, squinting up at him without glasses. Her eyes are red rimmed, as if she’s been crying. He wants to hold her and make sure nothing hurts her ever again.

“Takao,” she whispers. Her voice is hoarse and delicate; she seems so delicate in this moment, as if the slightest breath of wind could shatter her to pieces. It’s wrong for Shiyo to be delicate – at least, delicate in this terrifying way. Usually she’s so powerful, so precise and perfect and beautiful. 

She’s still beautiful like this, but in a tragic way. Takao doesn’t want her to be tragic. Takao wants his strong, unwavering Shiyo-chan back, and he’ll do his best to help her feel better.

“Geez, Shiyo-chan, you gave us such a scare. The upperclassmen are super mad at you for skipping so much practise, by the way.”

“There are worse things I’ve done for them to be mad about,” she mutters, and it all falls in to place for him. Of course she blames herself, of course she does, because she’s sixteen and has never properly lost in her life before now (or at least she hasn’t lost in a way that makes your throat hurt, lost to a terrible sport) and it’s all so… sad.

‘Cause that’s what everyone forgets, himself included. Shiyo-chan is sixteen; the same age as him, and yet the entire team depends on her, builds itself around her perfect shots. She hasn’t got the support net she once had in Teiko, doesn’t have the assurance of a perfect victory, and the loss of that to someone who is such a perfectionist must be devastating.

“It’s not your fault, Shiyo. He was – he wasn’t playing a good game. We would have shown him who was boss if he had just stopped playing mind games and instead stuck to basketball. We will do that, next time.”

Shiyo doesn’t move, eyes blank as they bore into his soul. Her eyes are so damn pretty, antifreeze green and framed by such long lashes. She’s so damn pretty, even like this, even as a wreck. It still hurts him to see her this way, though. He wants to help her. 

“No one blames you, Shiyo-chan. I don’t blame you. You’re my best friend, no matter what, and I love you even if you don’t win all the time.”

She lets out a little sniff at that, followed by a sob, and then she’s having a breakdown and he’s holding her tight in his arms and trying not to cry.

It’s the first time he tells her he loves her out loud, though he wishes he could be a little more honest about it, instead of hiding the blinding romantic affection he has for her behind facades of friendship.

***

The week and a bit between them losing to Rakuzan and Seirin winning against Rakuzan is… scary. It feels as if Shiyo is teetering on the edge of an abyss, like she might shatter if he touches her wrong. He tries to make her feel better, assures her the loss isn’t her fault, isn’t the team’s fault, and that next time they’ll win. He tells her this until she nearly believes it, and that’s when she reveals why she’s still so… panicked.

Apparently, Akashi Seijuuro, king bastard, has been giving her estrogen the whole year. The fact he does this while calling her that name, the one she abandoned, makes him fucking furious. And now Shiyo thinks that because she failed, because she wasn’t ‘entertaining’ enough, whatever the fuck that means, Akashi won’t supply her with estrogen anymore.

It’s not like he has to. It’s just – to give her such support while taunting her, while dead-naming her, while holding all that power over her head (because that’s what is was – he didn’t do it out of the kindness of his heart, he did it to have power over her) and then to threaten to take it away on a whim-

It’s disgusting. 

They meet with Kagami a couple days before the Rakuzan-Seirin game, and Shiyo is quiet and sad and Kagami is very obviously confused and scared. They talk about everything that isn’t basketball, so their conversations focus mainly on not being straight.

Sometimes Shiyo points out that she is straight, but Kagami says that she belongs in the LGBT community anyway, because she’s trans, and they should support each other because they both have it pretty tough, so they should stick up for each other out of solidarity.

They don’t hang out for as long as they usually do, Kagami throwing out some bullshit excuse and Shiyo grabbing on to it like a lifeline. Takao sticks with her as she changes out of her dress in the filthy men’s bathroom in the back of a struggling karaoke bar, sticks with her as she goes home.

It’s late afternoon, the chill of winter really biting at him. When they get to her house, she turns to him. The sky is cloudy overhead, grey and steely. She looks so beautiful, and he is in love.

“I’m going to tell my parents soon,” she says. “I don’t think I can keep doing this. Not now, obviously, but soon. Maybe next year.”

He knows it will end disastrously. If she doesn’t get kicked out, the next two years of her life will be hell – possibly longer, if she can’t move out right away. Casual misgendering will turn into cruel, purposeful misgendering; will turn into arguments and screaming and violence.

It’s so strange, really, how a woman as nice as Ms Midorima can turn out so terrible. It’s strange because he expects it, because he knows it will happen. He can joke around and be polite all he wants, and it won’t matter in the long run. 

“That’s really brave of you, Shiyo-chan. You don’t have to, though.”

“I know I don’t have to. I want to.”

She doesn’t say anything after that, and neither does he. They watch each other under weak winter sunlight, mostly blocked out by clouds, and then Shiyo turns away and goes inside. She’s so brave, so beautiful, and so strong. He wishes he were more like her. She’s his role model in everything, really, except social situations.

Then the Rakuzan-Seirin game rolls around, and Takao pulls Shiyo in the back of the rickshaw all the way to the game, and they watch Seirin win. 

It’s a miracle like he’s never seen before, and something tells him that Kagami doesn’t fuck around, that he’s going to be unbeatable pretty soon. He improves so fucking fast, like there’s a fire under his ass, goes at a breakneck pace and pushes himself to the very edge. There’s an NBA offer in his future, Takao can already tell, an NBA offer and a full and brilliant career ahead of him.

He’s going to catch up to Aomine pretty soon, going to be able to beat him one on one. For all that Takao loves, loves, loves basketball, he doesn’t have the dedication Kagami has. Maybe that’s why he’s so much better, when in the beginning all he had on his side were physical characteristics.

Takao isn’t bitter, though. Kagami loves basketball, and works hard to be good at it. It doesn’t hurt to lose to someone so plain nice, so good at heart. It’s better than losing to someone like Akashi, someone who doesn’t give a fuck about anything, really.

He’s sure the guy has his own issues – is pretty certain the guy has his own issues, actually, because his eyes aren’t exactly sane, but that doesn’t mean he gets to dump them on his teammates, or treat his friends like shit. 

Maybe he’s just too protective of Shiyo-chan. She doesn’t need it, really, ‘cause she’s much taller and stronger than him, but she also is pretty terrible with emotions and social interaction, so he takes pleasure in protecting her with his skill in flirtation and making people uncomfortable.

A couple of days after Seirin wins, they take Kagami out to some high end sushi place and pay for his meal (an exorbitant amount) to celebrate his win. Shiyo was skittish around him, as if she couldn’t believe he actually managed it. Takao is pretty sure Kagami is annoyed by all the disbelief and shock, but he’s too kind to actually say anything or complain. Doesn’t want to rub their faces in their loss, he supposes. It’s kind of him.

Anyway, after they take him out, Shiyo-chan gets a text. He doesn’t see who it’s from, only sees the way her face tightens. He knows she’s upset, knows that she’s scared and angry and a whole mix of emotions. He doesn’t know why.

She takes off on her own, after that, and doesn’t come back till late at night. He’s bumming around her house with Atsuko, discussing this and that and how Atsuko wonders if she’s bisexual too, because there’s such a pretty girl in her class, and she’d very much like to kiss her.

Shiyo looks exhausted when she comes back, but somehow satisfied. Reassured. He leaves after she comes back, ‘cause she looks pretty tired, and visual confirmation that she isn’t dead is pretty much all he needs.

God, she’s so brave. She’s going to tell her parents who she is, how she wants to live. He wishes he could be as brave. He wishes he could tell her that he loves her, but he can’t, because he’s a coward.

***

Over the holidays they meet up pretty much every day, to hang out. Shiyo wears dresses most of the time, pretty little things, and Takao wants to wrap his hand around the bit where her pale thigh is visible.

He doesn’t. 

Winter slips into spring again and holidays give way to schoolwork and basketball practise. A new routine is established, and things change little by little. Shin-chan’s boobs grow bigger, he grows taller and starts growing facial hair (he has to shave now, how embarrassing and yet he’s proud of it).

“I want to have surgery,” she says to him one day when they’re staying late after practise. 

“Oh. Okay, that’s cool, but you don’t have to.”

She scoffs in a manner so reminiscent of herself that it makes his heart ache. She’s so consistent, so true to herself. “Of course I don’t have to, idiot. I want to.”

“Ah, can I ask what surgery you’re actually planning on getting?”

“I wish to remove my penis and have a labioplasty to recreate a functional vagina.”

He has to admit he chokes at that, and spends a good two minutes trying to catch his breath through hacking coughs and breathless laughs. It’s just so hilarious, really, the way she says it so bluntly. He supports her, but surgery is a scary thought. What if something goes wrong? He’d be way too scared to get surgery, no matter what. Well, maybe if he was like, dying, but even then it’d be scary.

“That’s going to be expensive, though. Except you want to be a doctor, don’t you? Ah, a doctor’s wage will cover that, but you’ll have to go through med school.”

“I’m aware, Takao. I can wait, idiot.”

“You also won’t be able to have kids.”

She snorts at that. “I never wanted to knock up a woman anyway, Takao. If I’m going to have children, I will either carry them myself, or I will adopt.”

He drops the issue at that, ‘cause Shiyo-chan knows exactly what she wants, and he doesn’t have the right to intrude on that anyway. So he keeps his mouth shut and rolls with what Shiyo-chan says.

They’re second years, now, and the new captain doesn’t throw stuff at them nearly as much. Sometimes, when Shiyo flippantly demands the entire court to herself to shoot hoops, he thinks that maybe the captain should throw something at her, but its so damn funny. 

If he didn’t find Shiyo’s idiosyncrasies hilarious, he would probably hate her just as much as anyone who isn’t on the first string, who isn’t a regular. A prissy bitch that demands special treatment, that’s all they see. They don’t see the aching hard work beneath the shiny veneer, the trembling muscles beneath skin. Sometimes he wants to rip open Shiyo-chan, see how she works, and view her in the most basic form. Then he reminds himself that that’s a pretty serial killer-like thing to think, and tries to put it out of his head.

Shit, are all high school crushes this strong, this soul crushing? He doesn’t think so. He doesn’t think this can be counted as a crush anymore, actually. He thinks that this has progressed a little further, gone a little farther.

He hesitates to call it love, but shit, it’s something. 

And he just can’t – he can’t do it anymore. He can’t do the silent flirting, the teasing and dodging around and pining anymore. It’s gone on for a year, after all, and he can’t handle it anymore.

So he resolves to confess, the very next opportunity he gets. He’s not a fancy guy, he doesn’t generally kick up a fuss about stuff, and so he won’t kick up a fuss about this either. He’ll just slip it into one of their conversations, and Shiyo-chan will blush and stutter and reject him, and he’ll say that it was just a joke or something, and then he’ll cry once he gets home for absolutely hours.

***

She beats him too it. Of course Shiyo-chan doesn’t actually confess, not to him, because her confession doesn’t have anything to do with him and isn’t a confession so much as a coming out. And she does it!

It goes like this:

He wakes up early, eats breakfast early, and goes around to Shiyo-chan’s place with the rickshaw perfectly on time, because she hates her routine being changed in the slightest way. He wonders if that’s why she was so grumpy in the first few weeks of high school, but now she’s mellowed, almost. It’s nice to see. 

So he’s waiting outside the gate, ringing the doorbell, and no one’s coming to the door. From inside, he can hear shouting and yelling. He knocks a little louder, keeps ringing the doorbell, but still no one answers, and he waits outside like an idiot for absolutely ages. Eventually, his mum calls him, ‘cause she got a text from the school that informed her he was absent, so he has to leave.

“See you at school, Shi-chan,” he shouts at the house, and wonders as to what the fuck was going on inside. The Midorima’s are a very private family, after all, and he probably won’t ever find out as to what the ruckus was about, even if he is their elder daughter’s best friend.

At school, Midorima does not show up. He gets yelled at by the seniors for skipping practise, and yelled at by his teacher for skipping class, and he weathers their scolding with cheeky and somewhat apologetic grins.

His day sans Shiyo-chan is quieter than usual. He laughs less, enjoys the day less, and is overall less happy, ‘cause he just can’t help but worry about her. Is she doing okay? She’s sixteen, nearly seventeen, but she’s still pretty shitty at fighting and is quite delicate, and a little cowardly in an adorable way.

Around an hour into afternoon practise, Shiyo shows up, with dried blood on her nose, face and chin, and a huge bruise over her eye and cheek. Her eyes are red rimmed, just like they were when he came to see her after they lost to Rakuzan, and her expression is just shy of destroyed.

Murmurs drift around her, regulars and those that haven’t quit yet wondering why on earth their ace has been beaten up (and pretty badly, too). Its not unlikely someone she met just on the street got fed up with her attitude and beat her up, but as much as it’s likely, its also not.

Maybe it’s because he knows her. Maybe it’s because he stood outside her house for half an hour this morning and tried to make out the muffled shouts coming from behind the walls. Maybe it’s because she told him she would come out soon, and she told him that a while ago.

So during practise, he stays close to her, talks loudly and doesn’t tease her as much as he would usually. He touches her arm carefully, doesn’t clap her on the back like he usually would, and is in general much more gentle than he usually would be. 

They stay late, as usual, but Midorima’s shots aren’t as clean as they usually are. The touch the rim, sometimes even run around the edge of the metal hoop before sinking easily in. Something is so very wrong.

“Takao, I told my parents,” she says, three hours after practise has finished. Her arms are trembling and she’s covered in sweat. Her voice is thin and reedy, and she looks so… shattered.

“Is that… did they hit you?”

“My father was quite angry that I went behind his back and used hormones to transition. He said that I had irreversibly damaged my body over some passing whim, and didn’t quite appreciate my telling him that he was wrong.”

He’s slowly grinding his back molars into dust with the force at which he’s clenching his jaw. Blood is rushing in his ears, hot and loud and violent, and in this moment he wants nothing more but to find Shiyo-chan’s father and fucking destroy the cunt.

But he doesn’t do that. Instead, he places a hand on Shiyo’s shoulder. “Do you need a place to stay tonight?”

She looks like she’s going to cry, but she doesn’t, because even when weak Midorima Shiyo is strong. “Yes, please. I have all my clothes in my school bag, as well as enough medication for some time, though I don’t plan on imposing for very long.”

He gets the feeling this arrangement will be a tad more permanent than he anticipated. 

***

His mother takes one look at Shiyo-chan, beat up and in a pretty dress, and welcomes her in. If her parents already know, there isn’t really much point in hiding it from anyone else, since the worst of it is already over. 

Of course his mom recognises Shiyo from other times she’s come over, but she has the tact to only ask him after she’s sent the girl upstairs to have a shower and change into some warmer clothes.

“Ah, Kazunari, why is Midorima-kun here?”

“That’s Shiyo-chan, mum. She told her parents about her and things… didn’t really go that well.”

He can see the righteous fury that clouds his mother’s face, closing her off from reason and the world. She has strong opinions on things, and the one thing she absolutely fucking hates is child abuse. He agrees with her on most things – that is not an exception.

“She can’t go home right now, so I was wondering if she could stay in the spare room?”

His mother offers no arguments, instead welcoming Shiyo into their home and relieving him of the tiniest bit of apprehension he now feels silly for having. Shiyo emerges from the shower, and tiptoes downstairs just in time for dinner.

“Ah, Shiyo-san! Dinner’s ready.”

Shiyo looks shocked (and relieved) at the use of her name, and her face softens almost imperceptibly. That’s Shiyo-chan; emotion is expressed in tiny changes of her face, the corners of her mouth and the slant of her brow. 

They eat in near silence, ‘cause there’s nothing much to talk about without hitting landmines of catastrophic proportions – and he doesn’t want to do that, not at all. He’ll let Shiyo settle before he rocks the boat.

Oh, and speaking of rocking the boat, what’ll happen to his planned confession? Is it manipulative, to ask her out when she’s depending on him? Or is it insidious to pretend they’re nothing but friends even when living in the same space?

It’s so very confusing, a moral conundrum added to what was already a pretty complicated situation. Shiyo goes to bed early, but he stays up, staring at the ceiling of his room and knowing that the only thing that separates him from the prettiest girl he’s ever seen is a thin plaster wall.

Ah, how will he jerk off with a girl in the house? Once his mother leaves, he won’t be able to go back to being a slob; Midorima would kill him if he made a mess. Or maybe she’ll be too grateful to bitch at him? No, no, that’s not Shiyo-chan. 

God, he’s so screwed. Love is really more complex than he originally thought. 

***

So, he decides to ask her out. He gets flowers, he gets chocolate, he goes the whole nine yards, and then he promptly chickens out. The flowers and chocolate are shoved into his locker at school, and are abandoned until the flowers rot and the chocolate gets eaten by rats or something.

And he still has to confess. 

Shiyo-chan’s hair has gotten longer in the near-month since she has left home. Her fringe is parted, now tucked behind her ears, but it slips forward constantly, so she always has to tuck it back. He gets her a hairclip, and she uses it at home, but school is a little too gendered for her to do that there.

She’s ethereal in her beauty. Her skin is pale and smooth, and he wants to touch it and run his hands through her hair and- god, he’s never been in love like this before, has he?

Ah, now he can finally say it, in the privacy of his own head, and in the bathroom mirror after he has a shower. I love Shiyo-chan. I love Shiyo-chan.

Water drips from his wet hair down to the tiles, ‘cause he forgot to lay down the bathmat. He might slip and break his neck at any second. Would Shiyo be sad if he died? Of course she would, she’s not a fucking psychopath. He would be shattered if Shiyo-chan were to die; and unfortunately, it’s more likely that she would die than him. 

He shakes off the morbid thoughts, and focuses on how Shiyo-chan looked tucking her hair behind her ear and chopping up celery (she’s a shit cook, but it’s cute, and he’s pretty good at making curry and stuff by now).

“I love Shiyo-chan,” he says, and feels a little giddy. Its joyous, to say it out loud, a weight off his chest. He looks himself in the mirror.

“I love Shiyo-chan,” he says again, and smiles. 

“What,” Shiyo-chan says, and he jumps nearly out of his skin. She’s standing at the door, eyes wide behind her glasses and looking absolutely confused. It’s so rare to see such base emotion on her face, so he can’t be helped for gasping.

He also can’t be blamed for only then remembering that he’s naked, and screeching in shock and horror. 

“What did you say,” she says thunderously, stomping into the bathroom with murder in her eyes. Ah, he’s going to die today, isn’t he? And he’s still goddamn naked, man this sucks. He covers the most exposed part of him with his towel, and tries not to cower terribly.

“I-I like you, Shiyo-chan,” he squeaks out, “Please go out with me?”

She stops short, face flushed red to the tips of her ears. Christ, she’s so cute, even when homicidal threat is plain in her eyes. If he’s going to die here, today, he’s going to die happily, if only because he’s managed to finally, finally get it out.

“I mean! I’ve liked you for a long time, even before I knew you were a girl, and I think you’re amazing and cute and I want to kiss and stuff like that so I’d really like it if we could go out!”

“Shut up, idiot! I was already going to say yes!”

That pulls him up short. “Y-you’re saying yes? We’re going out?”

Shiyo blushes and looks down, frowning like the insanely cute girl she is, scowling and trying not to show how embarrassed she is. She blushes too hard, skin too easily pinking up.

“…Yes,” she eventually mumbles. Takao thinks he’s about to explode, about to shatter through the ceiling and fly up into the sky, endlessly floating away with happiness. ‘Cause he love, love, loves Shiyo-chan, and now she sort of loves him back, and even if she’s not entirely convinced he can show her how much he likes her later, ‘cause he has a fucking chance now.

He wraps his arms around her waist, tries to pick her up and fails miserably, but he’s clever enough to avoid her cleavage. She squeals indignantly, but there’s a hint of humour beneath her voice, like she’s as happy as he is.

Christ, they’re gonna be okay. It’s all going to be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> this was heavily inspired by HadenxCharm's fic 'The Thing You Can't Replace', I cannot recommend it heavily enough. Subject matter is a little bit similar (dealing with homophobia/transphobia) though homophobia is a little more heavily/blatantly involved in that one.


End file.
